Alex Masters

As an Italian game dev studio, this is basically wrong and needs A LOT of context: - Tax Credits, government, nationwide and regional grants, government guaranteed loans are a staple to support video game projects and strong incentives all over the world. In Italy we actually have very limited support (basically only a 12Mil€ Tax Credit per year): compared to other countries (UK, Canada, Germany, France etc...), it's basically peanuts. - Governments all over the world adopt this kind of incentives to both foster local talents and to attract external teams and investors: Canada for example basically built the local game industry around strong incentives, and is now a powerhouse. - A Tax Credit is not direct 'funding'. It helps you lower costs, but you have to have and spend the money first to get it. You use your credit to compensate taxes, but you have to spend money first. In this case, it's a 25% Tax Credit: you spend 1Mln€, you can now compensate 250k€ of taxes. Basically: you already need to have money. - Funding from the project came 100% from Dear Villagers: the Tax Credit is a nice bonus since it substantially lower your costs or can help getting a publisher on board but... yeah, you need to be already funded. - This is in NO WAY tied to 'DEI' or any kind of propaganda: any kind of video game made in Italy get access to the Tax Credit. The project list is public, it's very transparent and everyone can take a look: racing games from Milestone, the new Carmageddon from 34BigThings, Enotria, Soulstice, Star Wars and Mario + Rabbids from Ubi, Terminator from Nacon... just to give you some examples. On our own, we got it with On Your Tail, that you can define as a 'furry game', and with a 'very hot' upcoming visual novel for example... So yeah... while it may sound like a huge conspiracy it's just pretty much standard game industry practice (government support to strengthen the local industry), common all over the world and not tied to any kind of propaganda, DEI or agenda: it's just business.

A former Crimson Desert developer says the game is “on a completely different level than your typical mass-produced Unreal Engine 5 Games.”